Call me ungrateful, but I'm unimpressed with Bush's
Mars
announcement. It's not really a plan - there's no funding, there's
no technology initiative, no particular insight except "um, go to the
moon first". It's baldly political. And with a first deliverable 16
years in the future, it's free of presidential responsibility.

In the meantime the US is
already at Mars via robotic landers. With
a
less than 50% success rate to Mars it seems prudent to send robots
instead of people. Better science too — concentrate on
investigation rather than protecting fragile humans.
Space telescopes like Hubble or WMAP seem much more
valuable (and cheaper) than planting a flag and radioing the president from Mars.

I understand the romance of sending people to space. But
aren't we past that? And it's not like we can do both: without significant new
funding what this Mars program means is that we don't have
resources for robotic missions, space telescopes, etc. For the next
forty years NASA is all about flinging meat to Mars.

PS: this editorial
calling for one-way manned trips to Mars is pretty interesting.